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Operating system advocacy is an attempt to increase the awareness of a given computer operating system, hopefully resulting in more users of that system, the assumption being that more users will lead, directly or indirectly, to greater improvement in the operating system ("OS"), and even in the computing world in general for using the system. It is most commonly used to refer to OS's that are in the minority of use, to compare to the OS that the majority already use. A further assumption is that most of the users of the majority OS only use it because they are familiar with it or they are locked in. Advocacy of the majority OS is most often in reaction to the sometimes over-zealous advocacy of the minority OS's.Advocacy is one of the common pastimes of those who have a deep and abiding interest in the design, construction and usage of operating systems. For these people, the investment necessary -- both in money and time -- to own and operate a computer sometimes creates an emotional investment in their operating system of choice. Such emotional ties can lead to advocacy that can induce emotional arguments as people compare and contrast the virtues and faults of different operating systems.
These visceral debates most notably include:
Some wars of the past related to:
- VMS vs. UNIX systems
- OS/2 vs. Windows
- AmigaOS vs. MS-DOS/Windows
- AmigaOS vs. Mac
- AmigaOS vs. Atari TOS & GEMGEM G raphical E nvironment M anager) was a window system created by Digital Research, Inc. DRI) for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors. Later versions ran over DOS as well. It was a low-cost alternativ
There are related wars over programming languageAn alternate rewrite has been has been. Please refer to it for large rewrites. A programming language or computer language is a standardized communication technique for expressing instructions to a computer. It is a set of syntactic and semantic rules uses, video game consoles, and text editorNotepad is the standard text editor for Microsoft Windows A text editor is a piece of computer software for editing plain text. It is distinguished from a word processor in that it does not manage document formatting or other features commonly used in dess ( EmacsThis article is about the text editor. For the Apple Macintosh computer model, see eMac. Emacs is a text editor with a comprehensive set of features that is particularly popular with programmers and other technical computer users. The original Emacs was w vs vivi is a screen-oriented text editor computer program written by Bill Joy in 1976 for an early BSD release. The name comes from the shortest unambiguous abbreviation for the command visual in ex. Which is ). The command in question switches the line editor; see editor war).
Here are some of the arguments, false or otherwise, which advocates of supposedly opposing operating systems may use.
1 Caveats
- Note that market share can refer to either new sales or to installed base, which give very different numbers. This kind of information should be spelled out by people with a comprehensive picture.
- Because Macintosh computers have a longer usage lifetime than Windows computers, their installed base is greater than their share of new sales.
- Also, market share numbers for market segments. For example, the market share for Linux in the server market is much higher than for the desktop market.
- One definition of the term "market share" refers to the dollar value of new sales. Because Linux is often distributed without fee, those distributions would not add to its market share.
- Since most desktop and notebook computers sold by the big OEM companies are sold with the " Windows Tax", this could increase the Windows market-share artificially since the user could very well use another OS instead, unless the survey took this into account.
- Cost can mean either total cost of ownership (TCO) or the actual amount of currency required to obtain the operating system, which is a more precise and less disputed definition.
- It is worth bearing in mind Sturgeon's law.
